The ship is owned by Great Lakes Fleet, Inc. and is named for the former chairman of U.S. Steel, Roger Blough.

On November 11, 1975, the morning after the sinking, the crew of the Roger Blough recovered a 25-person life raft from the Edmund Fitzgerald.

[8][3] On May 27, 2016, while under operation of the Keystone Shipping Company, the Roger Blough ran aground on Gros Cap Reef in Whitefish Bay, Lake Superior with some minor flooding reported.

[10] At 5:45 AM on June 3, the Roger Blough began offloading some of its taconite cargo to the SS Philip R. Clarke to lift the ship off the reef.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board's August 17, 2022, incident report[16] "the probable cause of the engine room fire aboard the bulk carrier Roger Blough was likely the repeated removal and reinstallation of the furnace’s burner that led to the failure of its mounting coupling, resulting in the operating burner dropping to the bottom of its enclosure and fracturing its fuel supply line, which allowed diesel fuel to ignite.